A former hospital technician in Georgia has been sentenced to up to six months behind bars for editing mammogram results so that 1,289 patients were given false negatives. Ten of those women in fact tested positive, and two of them have since died.

Rachael Michelle Rapraeger, 33, of Macon, Georgia pleaded guilty
to ten counts of reckless conduct and a single count of computer
forgery after telling patients at Perry Hospital that their
mammogram results were negative when in fact a doctor had never
examined them.

“You played Russian roulette with the lives of essentially a
thousand women in this community,” Houston County Superior
Judge Katherine Lumsden told Rapraeger in court Tuesday, as
quoted by WMAZ-TV in Georgia.

Chief Deputy Assistant District Attorney Dan Bibler told
reporters that Rapraeger had initially pleaded not guilty to the
charges but changed her mind when offered a plea deal that would
ensure a jury did not decide her fate. She had “personal
issues that caused her to be disinterested in her job,”
Bibler said, and manipulated the test results to catch up on her
work.

“I think it’s a fair sentence based on what happened and
based on her cooperation in this case,” he added.

Sharon Holmes was among the victims whose lives Rapraeger put at
risk. Holmes was told in 2009 that her test was negative, only to
learn two months later that not only did she have cancer, but it
had spread to her lymph nodes.

“You could have made a different decision and my family and I
would not be living this nightmare,” Holmes said to
Rapraeger in court this week. “If I’m living a sentence of
having cancer then you should live a sentence behind bars.”

Holmes, unlike two of the 1,289 women who did not find their
disease in time, is lucky enough to have her cancer in remission,
she told reporters after the sentencing hearing.

“Just letting her know what she’s done by not following the
rules or her job like she’s supposed to be doing,” she said
of speaking in court. “I’m not a name on a piece of paper,
I’m a person, and I think she will remember me.”

Rapraeger will also serve 10 years of probation after she’s
released and will be forced to pay a $12,500 fine. She will not
be permitted to work in health care during her probation. The
felony will be stricken from her record as long as she does not
“violate the terms and conditions of the sentence,” attorney
Bibler said.

Defense attorney Floyd Buford said the prosecution offered
Rapraeger the deal because there was little evidence to present
at a trial, adding that Rapraeger was not properly supervised at
work.

“She just could not keep up with her workload and when faced
with that, she started doing what she did not making money but
trying to make her hospital employer happy, nothing realizing
what the consequences would be,” Buford told WMAZ-TV.
“She’s going to be paying a price, but even without that
she’s very remorseful.”

Convicts sentenced to prison time are traditionally taken
directly to prison from their sentencing hearing. However, Judge
Lumsden told Rapraeger that she would be free for at least
another 48 hours and potentially as long as for weeks while the
state waits for an available space at a probation detention
center.